


Once Upon a Homecoming

by Neftzer_nettlestonenell



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Enchanted Forest, Gen, The Enchanted Forest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-24
Updated: 2018-01-31
Packaged: 2019-03-11 23:22:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13534713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neftzer_nettlestonenell/pseuds/Neftzer_nettlestonenell
Summary: Three heroes find an injured man who lost his way as a boy, now washed ashore in what the Curse left of the Enchanted Forest. Can they help him remember the good about who he is and what he stood for, once upon a time? Set to immediately follow the Season Two finale, "And Straight On 'Til Morning".





	1. Home Again

" _And the waves crashing around me, the sand slips out to the sea.  
And the winds that blow remind me, of what has been,  
_ _and what can never be._ _"_

It was taking him apart. His joints could no longer hold, his mind could not much longer stand the swirl of terror in the electric tempest of green.

There was a wind, but yet, not. His mind was swamped with fear, with terror. And the nightmare came back to him as his eyes, quite open, had let go of her hand. Abandonment: the greatest, unfaceable fear. Enacted upon him, and enacted by him.

' _All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again.'_

If the portal were a spinning wheel he wished it could offer him a sleeping curse, a respite. Only his flailing hands could not locate its spindle.

His mind recalled his first realm leap, showed him the damp night in that forest, reminded him of slick palms, grabbing for his poppa and finding only loose soil and no footholds. Sinking, slipping, away. Away. Away.

_Alone._

As his senses sharpened and the portal withdrew, perception returned to him. He could taste brine, and grit with it. His face, through no design of his own, was in sand, he foggily realized, his body coming to rest as though in the act of kissing the ground.

He could not have said  _how_  he knew, what about the air, the humidity that was so singular, the breeze along this seashore, but deep within something told him where he was—where he had been magicked to—despite it being the last place on Earth— _Ha, his mind scoffed: Earth_ —that he would wish to come.

_The Enchanted Forest._

_Home._

He would not open his eyes. He would refuse. He would not accept this as his destination. He would let the pain throbbing in his right side grow, until it removed him from consciousness again. Until, perhaps, it removed him forever.

He did not think he could move.

He longed to hear a taxi drive by, a cabbie's rude shout, noisy exhaust and sounds echoing off buildings with more stories than he could squint to count. The smells of food and garbage, gasoline and asphalt in the heat. The press of people so numerous a single man who did not belong there was faceless, uninteresting. A true nobody.

Instead: water lapping not too far from his heels. Gulls calling to one another. Wind in tall evergreens. And then, as he faded in and out, feet upon wet sand. Approaching.

* * *

A man's voice.

Long hair.

"Poppa?" he asked, his mind muddled, his voice cracking so that he could hardly be understood.

He waited to hear his father say his name. To tell him who he was. If he was, again, Rumplestiltskin, the Dark One's, son.

Or still (warts and all) the man of his own making.

_No. Not Poppa._

"Emma? Emma?" he asked on, begged, confused, lost to time and place. "Em, that you?"

"What's that?" the man's voice asked. "Emma? He's calling for someone," concern audible. "For 'Emma'."

"Emma?" a woman answered, her voice like the chirp of a bird, saying the name familiarly.

"No," her voice tried to assure him, tried to explain. "Emma's not here anymore. She's gone home." A pause, and then, "Home to Henry."

And there it was, like a magic word to unlock a grimoire spell. In its wake he could hold himself together no longer. With great effort and much physical pain he rolled away from where these voices were trying to rescue him. Away from help and succor, out of their grasp. He rolled back into the clammy sand of the beach where he had washed ashore and let himself shed the tears of a lost boy named Baelfire. For Emma, for Henry.

For Neal.

_...tbc..._


	2. Aurora

I. Aurora

" _I'll tell a story, paint you a picture from my past.  
I was so happy, but joy in this life seldom lasts_."

He was in-and-out.

Sometimes he would awake thrashing, others, simply in flop sweat.

He had been moved from the beach inland—he could not tell how far—and installed upon something softer than hard ground that smelt of a particular type of moss cottagers used to burn when other fuel was low. He had no blanket or covering (or perhaps he kept throwing it off), and his coat had been taken from him, his striped scarf as well. When the sweat was not upon him he could feel the coolness of the forest floor teasing at his neck.

His side both burned and froze, only occasionally turning to an empty, worrying numbness.

"And which one was Emma?" the man had wondered.

"The one with the blunderbuss," a different woman, no chirp in her voice, had answered.

Later, he heard the strains of a song he remembered his poppa, long before the curse of the Dark One had come over him, singing in the night. The first woman's voice sang it now, clear and prettily, the song of a father who went to chop wood in the forest and as night falls he seeks for his children, singing, calling them home.

But the next time he woke, the man—and the second woman—were not to be heard, or, opening his eyes, seen. Only the woman, more a girl, really, with the long hair, sitting not too far away from where he lay. His eyes—still, after all this time those of a weaver's son—noted the rich fabric of her feather-collared cloak.

"And what're you?" he asked, his unused voice on the edge of hoarse, "Some kind of a princess?" He saw now he was upon the ground, beneath a crude forest shelter.

She turned at the sound of his voice, and smiled. It was a very sweet smile. Just the kind a princess ought to know how to give.

"You talk like her," she announced.

And he knew who she meant before she spoke the name which hurt him, shamed him to hear.

"Like Emma," she went on, clarifying, oblivious to any turmoil her speech might cause him.

"Where I—" he reminded himself that if he believed a lie he could sell it. Reminded himself how dangerous it was for him to be  _here_ , of all places. How perilous his situation should he become known to be The Dark One's son.

"Where I come from, that's how people talk," he offered, and would have shrugged to add a second level of plausibility, had shrugging not involved pain.

"Storybrooke," she said, matter-of-factly.

"No! Naw. I'm not from Storybrooke," he both lied and did not lie.

"But Emma is," she disagreed, lightly, pleasantly. She was clearly well-trained in the necessary graces. And naively accepting, to boot.

He put in a half-chuckle at her understanding of Emma's origins and proper place in the worlds. "Emma is  _not_  from Storybrooke," he told her. That, at least, was true. "She's like me," he slipped into another lie, "a New Yorker. To the bone." Well, maybe not a lie. The multiplicity of New York suited both of them rather well, no matter their far-flung origins and previous sojourns.

"New… _York_ ," the princess tried it out. "Well, I  _like_  how you talk. No one here talks like that."

"No. They don't," he agreed, somewhat under his breath.

"I beg your pardon?" she asked, not having caught what he said.

"Nothing," another lie. "Um," he tried to look better around himself, get his bearings as to where in the Enchanted Forest they might be.

"I wasn't always a princess, you know," she told him. "I mean, I was, always— _born_  a princess—but, I didn't always live as a princess."

"'Zat right?" he asked, though she had not truly sparked his curiosity.

"Yes. I was raised in the woods. I know I have been asleep a great long time—because of a curse—" she told him, "but I am not so useless out here as these clothes might make me seem."

Somehow he grabbed at a remembrance of the days since he had arrived, of time when he was more or less alert in his fever. "But they leave you behind a lot. And you don't like it."

"Well," she asked, "would you? Would  _Emma_?" she protested. "She's a princess, right?" And now a slight pout. "It doesn't mean  _she's_  always left behind with nothing to do but wait for the others to return."

He realized he was going to have to get used to hearing a fair amount about Emma if he were going to stay among present company. And currently, with his wound he had little choice, or knowledge of a better place to be.

"No," he agreed, wishing they were done speaking of her. "She's  _not_  one for sitting at home, sidelined from the action."

"I thought not," she agreed, with a satisfied finality, and rose from where she had been seated.

"Wait, wait," he called after her, raising his arm to flag her down. Pain with the movement. He had no energy for sitting upright, much less for going after her. "Don't go. Don't go running off after adventure just yet."

"Do you need something?" she turned back to ask, fully attentive. "You've been very sick, but I'm afraid not in a way we're familiar with. Philip and Mulan, they're…soldiers. They know a few things about tending battlefield injuries, but… And we know of no magical healers since these lands were Cursed, certainly none that we would trust taking you to."

_No. No magic._

_Please._

"It's gonna be okay," he said aloud, though he was not certain his saying so was not merely another breed of lie. "You happen to know anything of botany?"

"Botany? What is that? A game of some sort?" she asked, eager for his answer, "A drink?"

"It's plants, herbs. I know something of it," he lied on, "in  _my_  world."

In just the short length of time since he had arrived here, he felt the weight of those fourteen years he had spent in this land learning its ways, using the forest to live, felt it more heavily upon him than the many years he had spent since living, surviving, elsewhere.

"And you think the plants here might be similar?" She became keenly interested, her eyes growing bright with the notion of even a small similarity between their two lands, and advanced toward him.  
"Do you know fairy's foot?" he asked, squinting as their growing-lengthy conversation had caused his side to flare, using the name for the flower those in his village had long ago used.

"Fairy's foot?" she thought. "No." Her face showed disappointment. "I don't think so. Perhaps it doesn't grow here."

"It likes sandy soil," he told her, disagreeing, knowing full-well the Enchanted Forest was the only place it  _did_  grow. "Near water. Another name for it is 'drop lily'."

"Oh, yes," she smiled, now pleased. "I know drop lily. My aunties used to send me out to collect them in the Spring. You think it will help you?"

"I'm sure of it," he told her, recalling, with surprising ease, a poultice that could be made of it to draw out almost any infection. "If you can find enough."

"How perfectly exciting," she declared, "that your world and ours should share the same healing herbs!" She was beaming, whether because she was just that lovely of a person that she was pleased to be helping cure him or because he had given her a moment of utility, a task to accomplish, he could not be certain.

"I'm sorry," he said, "you didn't tell me.  _What's_ your name?"

"Aurora," she told him, with another one of those smiles. "But my aunties called me Rose."

"I'm Neal," he said, trying not to notice that in doing so he was swallowing down another name to which, in this land, he had first rights.

She perked up even more at this introduction. "You didn't say how you know Emma," she asked. "Or Henry."

"Yeah," he agreed, he hadn't. In a flash he thought of lying again, but after eleven years without his son, he could not find it in himself to deny Henry—even over this great a distance, even at what might prove, in future here, a cost.

"Henry's my kid," he said, restating it for her in less slangy terms. "My son."

The expression on her face halted for a moment. "Oh," she said, "I didn't realize Emma was married."

"Emma," he ruefully chuckled, saying her name for the first time not out of delirium. It was an uneasy sound, as was the laugh that followed it. "Yeah. Huh. Married." He could tell there was no room in the eyes of this princess to explain that Henry's parents were not married, and with no intention (or even practical ability at present) to become so.

"Mulan will be so excited to meet Emma's husband!" she chirped, then becoming more intent. "How  _is_  Henry?"

He gave a squint, allowed his mind to gloss over the sin of omission in not setting her straight. "Remind me again how you know Henry?"

"We sort of met…" words failed her in describing the manner of their acquaintance, "once upon a dream."

"Right!" he agreed, recalling now the tale of the fire room cross-realm communications, and realizing it was no use trying to explain to her why the way she euphemized their meeting would strike him as amusing.

She grew perceptive in the reading of his expressions. "You're missing him," she said.

"It's just," he confessed, "I wish I'd grabbed my iPhone this morning. It, uh, it has his— _portrait_ —in it."

Her immediate concern for him was almost palpable. "Oh."

"He and I, we've—been apart for many years. I missed his growing up."

She shook her head, wholly sympathetic. "And you don't want to miss any more."

"No, I don't."

"My parents sent me away as a newborn," she confessed. "I didn't see them again—didn't know them-until I was sixteen."

He looked at her. Wondered if he knew more of her story than she did. "Where're they now?"

"I don't know," she said, with a very different smile than she had been using. This one wistful, distant. Sad. "I was asleep for so long they might be dead. Or, they might have been carried away by the Curse to Storybrooke. No one left is certain." She seemed to muse on this.

Several beats passed, after which she visibly pulled herself together, and out of her momentary lapse into gloom. "So," she declared, with a 'let's get to it' intake of breath, "all the more reason to get you healed and to get you back there. To Henry."

"That's the plan," he agreed, unable to let his mind fully believe in such an eventuality.

"A plan" she clearly relished the development, relished the fact she herself had devised it. "I shall inform Philip and Mulan."

**...TBC...**


	3. Philip

**II. Philip**

He could sit, nearly upright, after a week of rotating doses of the fairy's foot poultice. But his blood was still weak, he could tell. He had lost much of it, and edible meat (a cure even in enchanted lands for iron-poor blood) was scarce in this corner of the Enchanted Forest, greens even more difficult to find as the land had been scorched by Regina's Curse, and in places appeared to have been sown with salt. He had been wracking his brains to come up with another possible source of iron short of having to ask for the nearby, bitter seaweed be brought and dried for him to attempt eating.

Assuming he could keep it down.

Here, he was The English Patient, he realized, tended to by this trio that thought him one thing: friend and husband to Emma, father to Henry, off-lander. When he was really quite another: son of the Dark One, born and raised as a peasant in this very Forest. What mattered several hundred years of time having passed since last he saw this place? If they knew his true identity, they might well mark him an enemy. Or worse yet, see him as a pawn, someone to bring under their control in order to get to his father (and manipulate or subdue him).

Perhaps he was not being nursed in an abandoned Italian villa following the second world war, perhaps he was not a German Count who had fallen from the sky and was taken in first by nomads. He was not disfigured. But like The English Patient he spoke both their language  _and_  the language of another culture. Understood hiding himself under the skin of another was a means to survival, even amongst friends.

Confessing to his identity, to his true name, seemed impossible. It  _may_  have been more than mere happenstance that he was found as he was, by people familiar with Emma, with Snow White and Storybrooke—even, with Henry. Destiny, perhaps. He would not speak against Fate. But he would continue in his thanks for it, coincidence or not. Were he among any others in this Land, he could not even imagine he would be thinking twice about not owning up to his true self.

Perhaps it was Aurora's total faith in everything he said, the pleasure she took in every act of assisting him. Perhaps it was Philip's sincerity, the camaraderie the prince so easily made one feel. Perhaps it was these things to which he owed any pricks of conscience about his identity.

It was the other woman—Mulan—who discovered what he had begun to suspect. That, like an arrowhead (the terms in which she couched it), the bullet within him had not managed to exit out his back. But it was not buried deeply.  _She_  could feel it, palpate it near enough to the surface of his skin.

She was hesitant to try and take it out, though he encouraged her to cut it. She refused, declaring she would not deprive him of any more blood until they could be reasonably certain he was better on the mend.

And so he would have to prove he could live yet a little while longer with the assassinating round inside him, where Tamara had lodged it.

* * *

"Aurora's very excited to have you here," Philip shared with him, one afternoon when the others were away from the campsite hunting for more fairy's foot.

"Yeah?" he asked, able now to lean against a mostly-straight tree trunk.

"She was asleep for many years," the prince mentioned what Neal already knew. "During which the Curse came to this land. Everyone she once knew and cared for was lost to either time or the Evil Queen's revenge. She now counts your Emma and Snow White among her closest companions."

He tried not to react to Philip's use of the possessive pronoun before Emma's name, his belief that she somehow belonged to him. But the squint would not be reined in. "Exactly what problems are you facing here?" he asked, more to be conversational than because he truly wished to know. "In this part of the land that escaped transport to Storybrooke?"

"Ogres," Philip listed, his tone that of practicality. "Lack of leadership, a blighted land."

_Lack of leadership?_ That was unexpected. "So you and Aurora aren't in charge?"

Philip shrugged as he set to re-building the fire for the noon meal. "It's complicated. My father's kingdom lay within the boundaries of the Curse. None of  _my_  subjects remain. Aurora was under a Sleeping Curse. None of her few subjects remember her as more than a myth. The peasantry left behind, convened here, hold allegiance to no one."

"That's tricky."

"Agreed," he bent forward toward the growing fire. "How fare Snow White and the Prince in the ruling of  _your_  land?"

"Oh, no," he held back a scoff. "Snow and David?" He shook his head. "Nah. There's no throne in Storybrooke. And in  _my_  land, it's ruled by a President. Obama. I voted for him."

This notion stopped Philip in mid-action. "Voted?"

"Yeah, everyone who casts a vote has a say in who leads. A democratic process."

Philip nodded his head, slowly as he processed the idea. "And so the people elect a King. Your King Obama rules—but what about his son, does he take the throne next?"

"Naw. Naw," he couldn't help but smile a little at the prince's political naiveté. "After a set time period another election takes place. A new president. The best person to do the job."

Philip took a long moment to consider this. "Perhaps that would be of benefit  _here_. Perhaps it would solve some of the problems we are facing."

He gave the shallow excuse-for-a-shrug his pain threshold now allowed. "I don't know how introducing the electoral process will have much bearing on ogres."

"No," Philip readily agreed. "But you see, I am a knight, Mulan a warrior. Aurora a princess. We know nothing of the basic everyday tasks needed to live in what is left of the kingdom. What know I of sowing and when to reap, or even what crops to have planted?" Sheepish dismay was evident on his face. This was a task in which he had clearly not been schooled. "Our castles have been leveled, our libraries lost to fire and rain. There is not even any easy way to learn of such things. Yet we  _must_  grow and harvest food. We  _must_  build lasting shelters—the Winter is coming. Even, we must fashion warm clothing. The people  _here_  are used to an economy and food source built around the sea. Yet there is no one left in the Forest with whom to barter fish and the like to gain what we must have for survival. The people must be organized. They must become learned in new skills." His eyebrows raised, almost as if in supplication, in appeal. "These things must be accomplished if we are to endure."

He did not know why he found himself letting this young man affect him. In his youth here, certainly he had received nothing but hardship and harsh treatment from the aristocracy. Vague, faceless rulers who any peasant knew were best to avoid altogether. After all, it was a king that had decreed his father was to serve early in the Ogre Wars, and again, a king who condemned Baelfire, still a child, to a like fate. And so, a king who had pushed his poppa toward the power of the Dark One. His poppa, who only considered taking on such evil in order to protect him, in order to save his family.

Originally, anyway.

And in the land that held Storybrooke, certainly there were few enough sovereigns in the World Without Magic's collective history that appeared truly benevolent, kind and compassionate in their dealings, putting the needs of their people first.

Perhaps he could see Philip in a different light from that long ago king, those off-land historical figures simply because he had come, somewhat, to know Snow and David. They were people, they purposed to do what seemed best to them for the good of many. Whether this was a consequence of their time in Storybrooke, their alternate identities, he did not know. Perhaps they had (and would have) proven themselves just rulers in the Enchanted Forest. Perhaps it was in them to accomplish what so many others thought unimportant.

And so he answered Philip as he might Emma's long-lost parents, were they to find themselves in such a situation.

"I know something of agriculture," he heard himself confessing, "nothing fancy, but grain and potatoes I can help with. Possibly a cabbage." He looked up to gauge Philip's interest in what he had said. "And if someone will cut the wood, I can instruct you how to assemble a loom."

The other man smiled, anticipation and hope crossing his face. He moved a safe distance away from the fire and closer to Neal in order to better concentrate.

"Have you any sheep for wool?" He found himself going on. "Search among the people for men who understand how to build. You will be better-served this winter with one large building to house everyone than trying to make small, individual structures."

Eagerly, Philip asked, "And so this is what your King Obama does?"

" _King_  Obama," he assured, "has a full staff of advisors, Phil. Chosen from the wisest in the land. He decides what needs to be done, and they tell him how best to go about it."

"So in that, your world is not so different from my father's kingdom after all," the prince answered, pleased to have found a similarity. "Only," and here he paused a moment to study, "we are short on knights or other noblemen needed to create such a trustworthy council."

He gave a 'huh'-sound from his belly that was not exactly a laugh or a scoff.  _Of course._  "You don't look among the nobles, Philip.  _Or_  the knights. Birth and training for war don't really help much in the clutch. Go among the people," he encouraged. "Find out what they did before the Curse. Statistics would say you have to have at least a few that know how to work the land. The poorer the person," he promised, "the more they will know."

"But how can that be?" the prince was clearly mystified at the notion of looking for expertise among the peasantry.

How to explain to one of the privileged few that privilege, servants and castles and armies have nothing to do with daily life. "Because when you're  _really_  poor," he said, knowing this fact to be true, "you have to know how to do everything for yourself. You can't buy clothes, or dinner. You can't hire out your housework. Mark my words, the poorest among them will prove to be the most self-sufficient. And that's what you need." He raised his chin, as if to settle the matter. "Find  _that_ person, appoint  _them_  to your council."

"After a speech of such insight, of such clear wisdom? Not until after I appoint you." The prince would not be deterred.

Aurora walked up, having returned, her arms brimming with the found fairy's foot. "Neal Swan," she announced.

Of course she would assume he and Emma shared a last name.

"Sir Neal of Swan, high councilor, and chancellor to the prince." She smiled as though she herself had been given a gift.

"Yeah," he said slowly, dragging out the word as if to distance himself from this new development. He half-chewed on his lower lip.

"Neal  _Swan_ ," he tried it out, knowing his sardonic delivery would be lost on a princess. But not too stupid to know exactly what sort of unspeakable titles Emma of Swan would be calling him were  _she_  to ever hear of it.

… **TBC…**


	4. Emma

**III. Emma**

He had been having strange dreams. Perhaps it was the fairy's foot that brought it on. Another use for it, he recalled (perhaps too late), was the drinking of a tea made from it in order to help locate something once lost. Nothing too important, mind you. A misplaced key, a few silvers hidden from an over-thirsty husband and then forgotten. Small things, needing small magic to find them. It took no great wizard to make such a tea. Any wife in the village could brew such a thing.

Though he was only using the Enchanted Forest plant in a poultice on his side, it must be seeping into him, through his skin, working at recalling lost things, forgotten memories, to his sleeping mind. Awakening something in his blood, something of the past.

Such dreams and his unfiltered speech during them worried Aurora, who herself slept little enough of a night. He hated to cause her concern, to dim her cheerfulness in any way, but he feared stopping the poultice too early, especially since the bullet still rested within him, and had not yet worked its way out.

So he continued using the poultice, tried to bite his tongue of a morning when Aurora questioned him about things she may have overheard the night before. Tried to smile more to offset his tumultuous nights in her mind.

"You cried out last night," she told him one morning, her concern visible. "Were you in great pain?" she asked, ever sympathetic.

"You could say that," he quipped in understatement, though his pain had not been a physical one, and let it lay.

It had been a dream vision of some eleven years gone, during his time in the World Without Magic. He and Emma had thrown their lot in, briefly, with a traveling carnival, moving about the American Southwest. A month and a half in, and they'd even scored their own mini-trailer to park among the other carnies'.

He worked with Emma along the midway, where she ran several games and he was the crowd plant helping her sucker in the marks, getting them to throw a ball or toss a ring, and believe—because  _he_  had won—that the games weren't fixed.

They were pretty good at it, and while it was unusual for either of them to work for a larger group, they were, despite this, settling in. Things were becoming familiar, relaxed.

But he never went near either the freak tent or the fortune teller. Even such humbug magic left him cold and uneasy. He'd have nothing to do with it.

"I'm gonna need a better ID," Emma had confessed to him when first they signed on with this crew. Her eyebrow cocked in that fetching way it had when she was coming clean about something. That fetching way in which he really had to work to be cross with her over whatever she had been keeping from him.

"How come?" he had asked, knowing no one here was looking too closely at anyone's papers.

"Because I'm still a minor," she explained, speaking on perhaps a bit too speedily, "and my forgeries aren't really good enough."

"A minor?" he had asked, marveling, his mind officially blown. His eyes blinked in rapid succession, he shook his head back and forth. "What?"

"You're one to judge," she sniped back at him, not enjoying his reaction. "I don't even know your  _real_  name."

He shot her a look.

"Don't give me that," she busted his balls. "I may not have finished high school, but Neal  _Cassady_? It's the name of some Jack Kerouac Beat or whatever. Not your real last name."

"That what you think?" he asked, working to keep defensiveness out of his voice, but testing her resolve in pursuing the matter. Emma  _Swan_ , after all, was hardly the greatest alias  _he'd_  ever heard of.

"How old do you  _think_  I am?" she asked quizzically, letting the question of his true identity drop.

"I don't know?" he replied, his confusion genuine. "Twenty? Twenty-one? You look twenty-one. At least." He paused. "You act forty."

He did not miss the spike of outrage in her expression. He lifted his eyebrows toward her. "You are definitely jaded enough for forty."

"Seventeen," she answered with finality, emphasizing the 'teen', proving again that there was still a level of withholding between them, no matter how close they had become. A closet yet full of secrets and unshared past.

Quick as he could, he had gotten her better fakes.

* * *

"C'm _on_ ," she had begged him, pulling at his arm in a girlish, clingy way Emma never employed. She was determined to visit the carnival's resident medium, who had promised her a free reading in exchange for some favor Emma had done her.

"Nah," he had tried to shrug it off, get her to let go of him. "You go." But she proved so set on it he finally allowed himself to be pulled along, albeit reluctantly.

The heavily-scented tent was prerequisitely dark. He kept as near the flap exit as possible as the woman tried to impress Emma with her practiced tricks. As one would expect, she looked deep into Emma's eyes and spoke of a trip, of true love, of reunions.

Growing bored (as well as already being uncomfortable), he risked a step or two forward and set his hand upon Emma's where it lay upon the medium's table, to try and get her to cut this nonsense short and leave.

"Em," he said, but the fortune teller had his hand almost before he laid it across Emma's.

"What is this?" the medium asked, seeing the bandage wrap across his knuckles that hid the few stitches he had needed after a small accident raising one of the tents with the other men.

"I don't know," he snarked to her, unnecessarily harsh, "you tell me." He was still intent on getting Emma to leave with him.

Emma looked up, her curiosity more than sated, her own skepticism having taken any fun out of this outing shortly after they had arrived. "Yeah," she agreed, able to sense his discomfort, "let's go."

But the woman had her thumb on top his bandage, and suddenly she was holding back his hand far too tightly for him to smoothly pull away.

"You should not have left," she said without preamble, her voice now devoid of the gloss she had put on it when faking Emma's fortune.

He did not respond, but tried again to jerk his hand out of her grip. No luck.

"You were protected there," she declared. "Powerful magic.  _Enchantment_. None could spill your blood there. A protection spell. You don't belong here."

"Yeah?" he asked, faking interest, trying to cover for the instant sweat that had broken out all over him upon seeing a violet mist begin to swirl deep within her eyes. "Don't worry. I'm going," he told her, referencing only his and Emma's exit from her tent.

He could not pass through that flap quickly enough.

Emma, unusually, had not asked about the woman's speech. In fact, it was as though she had not actually heard it.

He walked, probably too quickly, back to the mini-camper they had been given to sleep in. "We gotta go," he announced, surprising himself by not simply saying ' _I_  gotta go.' Or, in fact, not voicing his intent to leave immediately at all.

"Now?" she asked, somewhat taken aback.

"I can't stay," he had told Emma, knowing she would merely think someone had put the cops onto him. "She knows who I am."

They had quick-packed the few things they considered necessary for their coming travel, and had been on the road in the Bug minutes later.

That night, at the Flying J they had parked at for a few hours' sleep, both of them trying to fit with front seats reclined into the back (it was no mini-camper), their limbs and bodies a tangle not uncomfortable in the Fall chill, Emma was nearly asleep when, as he watched her, felt her presence, he realized how badly he wanted to tell her of his past. Had to remind himself that neither she nor anyone else in this world would ever believe him. Not even that fortune teller, likely, once the violet mist had dissipated from her eyes. His was a story too impossible for belief.

Still, he had said " _we_  gotta go". Still, his heart had produced that pronoun shift.

"My name is Baelfire," he had told Emma that night at the Flying J, into her ear where it lay so close to his mouth as she was nearly asleep.

He had done it, spoken that word for the first time in that World, that magic-less world. He had agreed to give her that power over him. The power of his name. To go along with the power he was beginning to understand that she had over his heart.

"Build a fire?" she had responded, drowsily. "Nah, I'm not cold." And she had snuggled in closer to him.

He had kissed her ear, the one into which he had confessed, wished a blessing on her, and slept himself.

* * *

When he awoke from the fairy's foot dream memory, he realized he had forgotten. That old charm of protection when he was within the Enchanted Forest. That no one could spill his blood. So it was Poppa, after all, who had saved him from Tamara's bullet—The Dark One's magic staunching the flow of blood upon his landing here. Why he hadn't bled out. Why he had instead been able to heal.

"It's time to get this thing out of me," he informed the three amigos later that morning. "But I'll have to be the one to guide your hand," he warned Mulan. "Mine on the blade first, yours over it."

"What," Mulan had asked, no humor about her, only wary confusion. "Don't you trust me?"

 _So_ _much more complicated than that_ , he thought, knowing she would not believe the truth: that in doing so he was saving  _her_  life,  _and_  his own.

… **TBConcluded in Part IV. "Mulan"…**

* * *


	5. Mulan

**IV. Mulan**

It was late in the evening, well-past dusk. Philip was away from the camp they had made. Off elsewhere among the now-Cursed Lands. Aurora had gone for a walk.

He was sitting more often than lying now. Leaning against his back taboo at present, the new cut there to extract the bullet several days old, but healing. Itching in the process.

He would live.

He looked over and again examined the warrior girl, Mulan, when he was able to be fairly certain she would not notice. He could not guess what her age might be. To the eye she was young, but she carried herself with such command and composure it made her seem older.

He found himself wondering how she fit into the seeming sister-wives configuration of the trio who had found him.

Okay, so thinking of her and Aurora as 'sister-wives' was a little flip, and a little unfair, but they couldn't deny the tension that seemed—to him—to be very apparent between these two women and lone Prince.

"So, how do you figure into this couple?" he asked her, not really thinking he would get the whole answer.

But her eyes were clear, untroubled by his curiosity or the challenging wording of his question. "I met Philip while Aurora was asleep," she told him. "Because I owed him, I joined in his quest to free her from the Sleeping Curse."

"Chewbacca, then," he mused, more to himself than to her. He nodded. "Okay."

"Who?"

"Wookie. Owes a blood debt to Han Solo. Story from 'long ago and far away'," he quipped to her, amusing himself far more in the sharing of it than her in the hearing of it. "You're pretty tough, you know that?" he went on, "Don't think I've seen you crack a smile since I landed here."

She turned toward him, wariness and circumspection flooding her demeanor. "And I'm not sure I've heard you tell the truth about much of anything in regard to yourself since you landed here."

She paused, and the air about him seemed to drop in temperature.

"I was in the army," she explained. "In that time I learned something of weighing a man's words." It was not spoken entirely like a threat.

Somewhere, knee-jerk, he managed to pull out his grifter's smile, a smile of tenuous confidence. "So you don't think I know Emma?"

"I don't think someone in your original condition would have cried out for her, and for Henry, as  _you_  did if you were only meaning to use it as a bluff." She considered, and added, "Insensate men on the cusp of dying are rarely so artful as to lie." Again she paused, and he knew she was self-editing before she spoke. "Aurora believes in you. Or should I say; Aurora believes in Emma's husband. So I will stay my own judgment. For now."

Having not officially been called out, he did not attempt to answer her near-accusation. Instead, "You were in the army?" he asked, in follow-up, running defense in their further conversation by routing the topic away from himself.

"Yes," she agreed. "I served my emperor."

"And were there many women in his army?"

"No," she confessed, her speech now guarded. "I served under the guise of being a man. A man, like the others."

"And so you don't consider that as a deception?" he asked, having gotten her to that point of confession. "About who you were? About yourself?"

But she was pragmatic, untroubled by his summation. "I did what I had to do to survive," she told him. "The path my life took made it necessary for me to become both: both my father's daughter, and the son who could take his place as a warrior." Again, those clear, untroubled eyes. "And so, I am both."

"Both, huh?"

She did not answer, but redirected their exchange. "Philip believes that you might have what it will take to help us save this Land."

"Philip?" he considered how to say it. "...is a very  _hopeful_  individual." He let his hands fall apart, and open. "I know a thing or two about survival. That's all," he told her, then tacked on in throwaway; "I'll help in what way I can."

"While you are here," she added, as though finishing his thought for him.

"Yeah, while I'm here," his voice turned lightly sarcastic, his brow furrowing. "Do you see me leaving? Know of any portals or enchanted ships leaving for other Lands?"

Her own face was open, untroubled. "I only meant to say that Emma will come for you."

"You think so?"

"Of course," she responded without urgency, clearly believing what she said. "Emma always finds people when she goes looking for them."

"She tell you that?"

"Yes."

"Figures," he replied. "Lemme tell you a secret, Mulan. Emma doesn't  _know_  I'm here. An enemy of ours threw a bean that opened a portal under our feet. With my injuries I fell through. To where, or in what condition, Emma could not possibly know. When we said our farewells on the edge of that portal it was the forever kind of goodbye. It was not the 'see you again, stay true to yourself in the meantime, peace-out' kind of goodbye."

But Mulan would not be deterred. With a determined single nod she announced, "Emma is honorable. She  _will_  come for you. Look," she offered as encouragement, "The Dancing Griffin is out tonight. Just there," she pointed up into the night sky, "nearby the Pinner Star. A good omen. My people believe it often foretells reunions."

He caught himself looking up before he could help it, but quickly chose to hold his tongue.

She was wrong, Mulan. About the constellation, which was in fact the Fiddle Sphinx, which his poppa had always warned him looked of the Dancing Griffin on certain nights during this season.

And she was wrong about Emma. As much as he wanted Mulan to be right-for Emma to search for and find him-he needed, desperately  _needed_  Emma to stay put, with Henry. He needed her not to take his refusal of her joining him lightly.

If he could find a way back to Emma and Henry, so be it. He would look whenever possible, search for a way back. But for Emma to leave Henry and take on the dangerous task of realm jumping multiple times to locate him?

 _Don't do it_ ,  _Em_ , he thought.  _For Henry's sake, let me go, let me do this one thing to keep you safe for him_.

* * *

"That medallion," Mulan asked later as they continued to gaze up at the stars, breaking a silence that had fallen between them. "The one you wear about your neck?" She referenced the swan keychain fob Emma had thrown at him across a bar back in Manhattan. "What is it? The Swan family seal?"

"Yeah, you could say that," he agreed with her simplified assessment of it, nodding, and rubbing it between his fingers. "It's sort of a talisman."

"And what does is signify?"

"Oh, you're gonna like this," he told her, rueful humor in his voice. "It's a reminder to me. To be trustworthy."

"Oh, I've seen that before!" Aurora had walked back into the camp and joined them, understanding what they were talking about without fully hearing their exchange. "That's  _Emma's_  necklace. I recognized it the moment we got your scarf off you and pulled you up off the beach."

Mulan flicked up one eyebrow, pointedly at him.

"You know," Aurora said, "I was thinking about you, about your being here. My aunties used to tell me the story of a soldier, who was in a decade-long war, and his death-defying journey back to his family…"

He cut her off. "You're talkin' about Odysseus,"

"Oh, so you know it, too!"

"Well," he back-pedaled, a creak of skepticism in his voice, "I mean, I know about a Cyclops, a conniving woman that beds and betrays him. And that when he  _does_  get home his kingdom is in chaos, his wife about to marry someone else, his son, what? Kidnapped?—"

"Well, yes, I think that's right," Aurora reluctantly agreed to his incomplete memories of  _The Odyssey_. Her demeanor dampened. A pout began to bloom on her face.

"But he gets home," Mulan reminded them, seizing on the one good aspect. "He finds them again. Even after all that time they're reunited."

"Oh! Don't worry, Neal. It's just a story," Aurora tried to make it better, pleading, trying to hold back her own disappointment. "Only a tale. Nothing more."

"Yeah," he said, knowing all too well about such tales. "Nothing but a fairy tale.  _Right_. Pretend. Make-believe."

* * *

Later he looked back up at the Fiddle Sphinx, read its position in the enchanted sky. His poppa would say the Fiddle Sphinx heralded change. Whether that change was progress or devolution depended upon which stars were nearest it. The Kronian Triad in its apex meant a win for good, for light magic. The Manticore's Claw, a move toward darkness.

But try as he might, without a telescope or star-gazing instrument of any kind he could not see the whole picture. Such was often the rub when mixing astronomy and astrology with divination, he seemed to recall.

 _Change_ , he wondered.  _Was the night sky only showing his arrival home? Or did it foretell something more personal; a change coming within him? A future reconciliation, or at least a détente, between his two halves?_

He could not be sure.

Sir Neal of Swan, high councilor and chancellor to Prince Philip and the Princess Aurora, self-professed husband of Princess Emma and father to Henry of Storybrooke, separated from his family, incognito non-stranger in a familiar land, reminded himself of one thing: though the stars never lied, they could never tell the whole truth.

Each Realm had its own stars, its own path, its own future to foretell.

The best he could hope for was that the day would come when the plurality of the cosmos would align and he would find himself again among those he had loved enough to ensure that only he had passed through that portal. So that he alone would face his present uncertainty.

Until then, all he could do was wait, striving to conduct himself in a manner that would make his family, Emma and Henry, proud of him. So that when they arrived, ten days or ten thousand years hence, their connection to his name would give them nothing to fear, nothing to grieve. No reason to hide their identities and connections here.

He saw clearly that this was his chance to get it right. To prove his mettle. To take lessons learned at the hands of the Dark One, at the hands of a pirate, and of many other unsavory people in his journeying, and use them for good.

For the good of all left behind here in the once-Enchanted, now Cursed Lands.

To give them their best chance.

**~The End~**


End file.
